Lori Hoagland attended and gave a presentation at the North Central Region Technical Advisory Committee Meeting of the National Plant Germplasm System in Ames, IA.
In addition to discussing how her lab is using the germplasm collection to investigate how crop domestication has influenced beneficial plant-soil-microbial relationships in tomato, carrot and quinoa, she covered how other Purdue faculty (Katy Rainey, Jianxin Ma, Mohsen Mohammadi, Diane Wang and Cankui Zhang) are using the collections in their research programs with soybeans, wheat, rice, cotton, quinoa and garlic. She specifically highlighted how Mohsen, Cankui and her lab are using the collections to support the Arequipa NEXUS Institute. The long-term goal of all of these projects is to develop new improved crop varieties that can achieve high yield with fewer inputs, and withstand changing climatic conditions.